I thought I would share some of the Key Research Questions here, as I prepare for my involvement in this workshop.  Some of these questions point at topical issues in the development of mobile learning strategies – issues that all mobile learning developers and researchers will need to grapple with:

• How can we best incorporate mobile technologies into designs and strategies for improved learning?
• What are the best approaches to achieve sustainable, low-cost mobile learning?
• How can mobiles enable more engagement and interactivity in lectures?
• Interrogating anywhere anytime learning
• What are the best-practice mLearning activities for each discipline?

ABSTRACT: Since July 2007 there have been more mobile phones in operation in Australia than there are people; and when you add in the other mobile, digital devices that ordinary Australians own – such as media players, digital cameras, and portable computing devices – it is apparent that there are tremendous tools for personal and lifelong learning in the pockets of our students.  Unfortunately, there is an equally enormous mental rift between the way these devices are perceived by most users (who usually view these devices as being for entertainment or personal communications only), and the way they need to be perceived if they are to be used to their ultimate potential: as digital "pocket knives" of tools for creation and learning.  This paper draws a comparison with personal computer users who view computers as primarily an entertainment or communications device; discusses user resistance to the intrusion of "work" into their "personal" spaces; and makes the case that changing user attitudes is just as important as training user skills, if we want to unleash the hidden power of ubiquitous mobile devices for personal and lifelong learning.

Author's Notes

Educators have contemplated the possible benefits of using mobile technologies for learning for decades, and hundreds of scholarly articles have been published in recent years on the potential affordances of mobile devices for facilitating, supporting, and enhancing learning. With so much interest, speculation and research into the use of mobile devices for learning, and with such broad availability and affordability of mobile devices, why hasn't there been a corresponding surge in the use of these devices in educational contexts?  Why aren't students already using their mobile devices for personal and lifelong learning?

Two dominant strategies have emerged in relation to ownership of digital devices for mobile learning: one in which a uniform set of devices is provided to all learners to overcome barriers of platform diversity and device access, on a temporary or permanent basis; and an alternative strategy which leverages the mobile devices already owned by students (regardless of interoperability) for learning activities.  I believe there are problems with both strategies – problems which currently present psychological barriers to the adoption of mobile devices as learning tools, despite their many affordances.

In the first instance, a school or institution may provide, sell, or direct students to purchase a particular mobile device, for example, an Apple iPhone, for the purpose of study.  In cases where devices are loaned to students on a temporary basis, students generally have very little time to develop proficiency or fluency in the use of the device.  Better outcomes are evident in cases where students are allowed to retain devices for longer periods of time to develop proficiency and personalise devices to suit individual usage preferences, but the expense of buying these "standard" devices (either for the organisation, or for the student) can make this strategy difficult to implement.

In the second scenario, an educator may draw on the mobile tools that students already own.  One major difficulty with this approach is the wide range of mobile devices owned by students, which are as divergent in capabilities for communications and networking, media playback and capture, and application customisation as you can imagine.  However the perceived advantage with this approach is that it allows students to use the tools they are already most familiar with for the purpose of learning.

This paper looks at this particular issue – the use of personal mobile devices for learning – and posits that the "personal" nature of these devices is a double-edged sword: it improves flexibility and reduces cost of participation, but at the risk of students feeling like learning is imposing on their "personal spaces".

TBC…

Some of the "m-learning" findings across 39 institutions include:

• students are switching from desktop PCs (71% in 2006, down to 44% in 2009) to laptops (65.4% in 2006 to 88.3% in 2009).
• one-third of students own and use Internet services from a handheld device, with another third of students owning or planning to acquire a handheld, internet-capable device in the next 12 months.
• "Asked to select the three institutional IT services they are most likely to use, if available, from an Internet-capable handheld device, responents who currently own a handheld device and use the INternet from it selected as their top three e-mail system (63.4%), student administrative services (official grades, registration, etc.) (46.8%), and course or learning management system (45.7%)." (pg 11).

via Tony Bates' e-learning & distance education resources

Chief information officer Peter Nikelotatos said 99 per cent of Curtin's students had mobile phones and 75 per cent of those phones were web-enabled.

"What we wanted was an application layer that recognised that our students were using netbooks and smartphone devices more and more and they wanted to be able to access a lot more information through these devices rather than desktop PCs," he said.

In addition to the current provision of mobile student information and services, Curtin is looking into the future use of mobile devices for learning:

"Areas that we want to explore a lot more are integration opportunities with our learning management system and a lot more around emergency and critical incident management and integration from an international perspective," [Mr Nikelotatos] said.

What is *your* institution or organisation doing to cater for the growing use of mobile, web-connected, devices? The mobile device industry is the fastest-growing sector in the IT and web markets, and making good use of mobile platforms will soon be as important for universities asmaking good use of the internet.

One of the most interesting aspects of any conference I've attended has been the out-of-session discussions, and the Handheld Learning 2009 conference has done this through support for a number of social networking tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, as well as their own conference forum area, which already boasts some 4500 posts on 1500 topics.  There's a lot of noise in all that buzz – but there are also some gems to be found.  Of particular note is the "Teaching for Mobile Learning" discussion area, where participants are sharing actual ideas for incorporating mobile learning strategies into teaching activities as well as actual case studies; from discussions with educators in the past, there is something of a divide between the theoretical potential of mobile learning and the practice of it, so some of the stories and ideas in this area are just excellent.

I'll be reading through all of the online chatter and will try to bring you some of my very best finds right here on the Mobile Learning blog… stay tuned!

I have no idea how a company can be involved in software development for so many years and still mess up the fundamental principles of interface design. Those offset icons have "fail" all over them. There is a reason that good interfaces arrange icons into grids – it's so that the eye can quickly scan across them, left to right, up and down, to find the information or application required. While offsetting them like that might look trendy, it's terribly bad for actual use.

The rest of the system looks pretty much like vanilla Windows Mobile. C'mon Microsoft, you'll have to do better than that if you want to claw back market (and mind) share!

One of the important trends illustrated by the  report is the growing importance of mobile devices and learning in mobile contexts.  "Mobile Internet Devices" are predicted to be a significant learning technology that will that will see widespread use in teaching and learning, and were categorised as "One Year or Less" until adoption.

But what also struck me from the Table of Contents is that four out of the six Emerging Technologies highlighted by the report are fundamentally or significantly mobile in nature: Mobile Internet Devices, Augmented Reality, Location-based ("Situated") Learning, and Smart Objects.  All four of these issues have been addressed by previous blog posts here, so I certainly believe they will be important learning technologies in the not-too-distant future.

Other key trends noted in the Horizon Report (and highlighted in a blog post by Kerrie Smith) include:

The perceived value of innovation and creativity is increasing

Technology continues to impact how people work, play, gain information, and participate in communities.

Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communication and socialising, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of their lives.

The way we think about learning environments is changing.

You can download a full copy of the Horizon Report 2009 (ANZ) here.

(Thanks for the heads up on the publication of the report to my colleague at the University of Canberra, Dr. Alan Arnold).

• Who: All educators around the world interested in mobile learning;
• What: A conversation hosted as part of the Ontario Educator Meetup on the strengths and challenges of mobile learning;
• Where: In an Adobe Connect conference room – http://connect.tcdsb.org/ontmeetup
• When: Monday August 24th at 1:00 pm EST – click here for timezone conversions
• Why: While new ideas and teaching strategies in improving student learning are constantly being developed and discussed, technology is often left off of the table (or mentioned only in superficial ways) in general discussions and in traditional Professional Development forums. It's time educators come together to discuss at how new technologies can be used to improve student learning and how to overcome the inevitable challenges associated with technology integration.

Worth checking out, although it may be a bit of an early start for me – it starts at 3am my local time.   Also, the final call for late-breaking papers and posters for this year's MLearn conference, to be held in Ontario, Florida.  Late-breaking content is due on the 24th of August, so if you've got something to share, make sure you get it in soon.  The conference itself will be held October 26-30: if you're interested in mobile learning, it's one of the two biggest international conferences on the subject (the other being Handheld Learning in the UK).

From a teaching and learning point of view, campus-wide internet access - or even access that targets social and learning spaces such as refectories, libraries, lecture rooms and labs - is what truly blends together online and face-to-face learning.  It means that while they're on campus, a student can access their online learning just by turning on their netbook or iPhone.  They can contribute to class online discussions while eating lunch or access their readings before class, using the technology they already have with them: their laptop, netbook, or other wi-fi capable mobile device.

Some of you may be thinking "can't students just go use a computer lab?"  To some extent, they can.  However, most students don't choose a library or computer lab as their preferred environment for group projects or study groups unless they're forced to.  In most of those locations, there are restrictions on noise levels, food, drink, physical access, and software installation/configuration.  If students can get together at a campus cafe or in a refectory to work together, they will.  By way of example: every day the refectory at my university is full of students working together, because that is their preferred space to do so.

But they can't get internet access there - not without an apparent struggle.  I work in an office just above the refectory, and one of my colleagues (in the same office) reports that there's no signal.  Even if they can get a signal, the process of actually logging in and getting network access is difficult or impossible for the apparent majority.

Then, of course, there are all the affordances of the internet that could be brought into learning situations.  Students can look up definitions or supporting materials in lectures, using a wiki to collaboratively create lecture notes, or blogging an experiment or other learning experience, live from a student lab.

For mobile learning - and even for flexible learning - at any educational institution, equipping formal and informal learning spaces (such as social spaces) with fundamental enabling technologies like wireless internet access has to be at the top of the priority list.  It even makes sense from a budget point of view, as every laptop a student brings in and uses takes pressure off the student labs.  This, in turn, reduces the amount that has to be spent on standard-image, admin-locked, physical lab computers… and frees students to use their own computers which can be configured to best support their particular program of study.  That's what I call win-win!

The device was pre-loaded with a number of "apps" (applications/software) that supported learning, most of which were "connected" (i.e. they used or required an internet connection) rather than standalone, and it was a good chance to play with a few new ones (such as this Molecular Modelling app) that I haven't seen before.

As a designer myself, I happen to love love Apple products - but I am no "fanboy".  I love the quality, ease-of-use, flair for innovation, and sophisticated, minimalist industrial design that Apple have built their reputation on.  However, in my original evaluation of the iPod Touch (written a full year before the Apps store was released), I was dissatisfied with the device's lack of certain content creation tools (camera or audio recorder, for example) and its closed proprietary architecture.

Over the past couple of years, Apple have done a great deal to redress these initial shortcomings.  The launch of the Apps Store late last year meant that developers all over the world could finally create ways to use the iPod Touch and iPhone that (I'm sure) nobody at Apple could have envisioned, and opened up these devices for customisation to the needs of users - and learners.  Some of the new apps have helped overcome the shortcomings of the original devices, such as adding advanced recording (and uploading) capabilities to the iPod Touch, and improving the capability of these mobile devices to support constructivist pedagogies.

Much of the Mobile Learning Roadshow explored the various apps that have been created for the iPhone and iPod Touch (including the two linked above).  It turns out that some universities (such as Stanford and Duke universities) have gone so far as to create customised iPhone apps for accessing various aspects of student life, including courses, campus maps (working with the iPhone's own GPS) and university information. I can see these working well to engage students and provide them with support at (quite literally) their fingertips.

In my opinion, the Apps Store made the iPod Touch and the iPhone significantly more viable as an m-learning device: I could even go so far as to say that the ability to customise and add functionality should be a central tenet of practically all digital devices aiming for lifestyle ubiquity and flexibility.  Since m-learning ties in heavily with concepts of ubiquitous learning, convenience, flexibility and personalisation, I'm sure you'll understand my initial concerns with the iPod Touch and the iPhone, prior to the opening of the Apps Store.

Some of the Apps that are currently available for supporting learning are really good.  The capacitive multi-touch screen of the iPod Touch and the iPhone are perfectly suited for interacting with 3D models and detailed diagrams, and one developer has managed to fit *all* of Wikipedia into an App that can be used offline on an iPod Touch or iPhone.  Such applications can be particularly valuable for reference, revision, learning from instruction, or for learning activities based on exploration and investigation of existing resources.

The major gripe I have with these learning resources, of course, is not with the resources themselves (which, as I said, are terrific), but with the equity and interoperability issues that accompany most advanced personal learning tools on expensive proprietary platforms.  In a mixed educational environment, there will always be students who cannot afford an iPod Touch or iPhone, making it unethical to mandate the use of these Apps for learning in situations where the same application cannot be used via some other platform to provide equal opportunity and equal access.  Unlike personal computers (which can be made available via "student labs"), it's not *usually* possible to have "public access" iPods to correct these equity issues; and mandating that *all* students purchase an iPod Touch (for example) will never be met with enthusiasm by those students who can least afford to meet that particular institutional requirement; with even less enthusiasm when some students discover they only have one class each semester that actually *uses* the things; and with dismay when they realise that they bought an iPod Touch this year, but are required to upgrade to the latest version of the device next year to keep up with the latest Apps and/or university standards.

The other gripe I have with the Apps model is that Apple gets to be judge, jury, and executor of all applications that want to be on iPod Touch and iPhone devices.  As Cory Doctorow correctly states in this blog post, that means that it can impose its view on what should or should not be available as an App, and represents a restriction to the freedom of software and, potentially, of thought.

Personal gripes aside, things have certainly progressed a long way for the iPod Touch and iPhone.  While the presenters wouldn't comment on the issue, I'm personally very optimistic that the next generation of iPhones and iPod Touch devices will come complete with the core functionalities lacking in the current and previous iterations of the hardware (e.g. video recording and MMS), which will make them so much more useful for all kinds of constructivist learning activities centring around learner created content and the sharing of content.

Moving right along, the presentation also looked at iTunes U, a content distribution model for iTunes targetting the higher education sector.  iTunes U allows podcast content to be distributed to university staff and students allong organisational lines - for example, restricted to a class, a department, a faculty, to anyone in the university, or to the world at large.  Stanford University recently made big news all over the world by making its content on developing apps for the iPhone public via its iTunes U presence.  The course received well over a million hits and generated considerable publicity for the university (and for Apple!).  It's a good example of what can be done in higher education to show off great ideas and opportunities and attract students and industry attention alike.

MLE provides a mobile interface to Moodle in two different ways.

1. It features a custom Java application, capable of running on the majority of contemporary mobile phones. Some testing on different handsets shows that this Java application run on different handsets and at different resolutions. The big advantage of a custom Java application as a mobile interface is that the entire interface is dedicated to accessing Moodle functionality, rather than trying to fit Moodle menus and commands within a web browser, with its own menus and commands.  As an example of how this simplifies things, the MLE interface has its own internal bookmarking system, which operates consistently between handsets.  By contrast, different handsets designed by different manufacturers each have their own web browser which implements bookmarks in different ways, making it very difficult to train a user in how to bookmark a Moodle page as the process is specific to their device.
2. For handsets that cannot install the Java application to access Moodle, a standard web/browser-based interface can be used to access MLE.  This provides a "fallback" for students wishing to access Moodle but unable to install Java, or, for example, using a friend's phone to quickly check their online course materials.

Of particular interest to me is MLE's implementation of "Mobile Tags" - a QR Code reader built into its Java client. While this doesn't appear to work on my handset, it has a lot of potential in terms of supporting situated learning activities and linking realia and printed learning resources with online and rich media via mobile devices.

I've had a chance to play with our own implementation of MLE, and while it may need a little polishing, it's well on the way to being an excellent product for mobile learning.

A number of educators have started experimenting with the use of first-person "Point Of View" (POV) video to record learning and assessment.  A hub of activity has begun at the EduPOV site, with a conference (AUPOV) planned for later in the year.

I've been interested in first-person perspective video for some time, as I can see it having many uses for learning (e.g. facilitating augmented recall of a learning activity), sharing experiences (particularly ones requiring special skills), and providing evidence for assessment. Here's a concept photo I created (in 2006!!!) that illustrates where I thought POV might go… one day!

The video camera(s) (possibly one on each side for stereo spatial recognition) would drive the display of information that would be viewed on the transparent OLED lenses of the glasses - an advanced form of augmented reality.  At present, however, first-person cameras are limited to recording, rather than augmenting, vision. So my current EduPOV setup is considerably simpler than where I envision this kind of thing leading!

That's a photo of my POV glasses, with the camera visible as the small dot on the shoulder of the glasses.  The camera is VGA quality (640×480) and also takes still photographic shots, with an 8GB memory capacity - that's a fair bit of video, and more than can be recorded on its 2-hour internal li-ion battery.  I paid under US$100 for these, including postage, and the glasses also have a built-in MP3 player and FM radio; the lenses are hinged and flip up, and can be replaced.

I'm experimenting with these for a number of different learning activities at present:

• Augmented recall & reflection: learners can record learning activities in which they participate, and then play back the experience to absorb additional detail or to pick up on mistakes they may have made during the activity.
• Rich media creation: you've all seen the videos taken from the first-person-perspective of insane snowboard riders or rally car drivers.  POV can be used to record experiences that require special skills to "share" these experiences with learners or peers.
• "In Your Shoes": The learner conducts a face-to-face role-play, for example, a client interview, with the OTHER person wearing the POV glasses.  They can then review the video of themselves, from the OTHER person's point of view, to reflect critically on their own performance and to empathise with the other person's perspective or impressions.
• Recording assessment: learners can record themselves demonstrating a competency, and talking through the process to provide an idea of what they're thinking as they complete the task.  The video would then be uploaded to a site, LMS, or e-portfolio for an assessor or employer to view.  This could be used effectively for distance-based or online assessment of competency-based tasks.

How are YOU using POV (or thinking POV might be used) to enhance learning and teaching?

My absence from the edublogosphere (is it still called that?  Was it ever called that? :D) was noted by many of you, and on behalf of the curveballs that life threw me I would like to humbly apologise for the almost-one-year since my last post.

As old friends do, however, let's catch up!  I hope very much that the year that's passed has been kind to you and that you've been enjoying a happy and successful 2009 thus far.  This year has brought sweeping changes in my life, one of the most significant being a new job with significantly bigger possibilities for me to put into practice many of the ideas and possibilities for mobile learning that I've shared with you here over the last three years.

I'm now working as an E-Learning Designer at the University of Canberra's Teaching and Learning Centre ("TLC" - I  really <3 its acronym ).  It's a fantastic team and I'm absolutely loving it… and I'm also very much enjoying working on a university campus that's full of life every day.  The University of Canberra recently implemented Moodle as its Learning Management System, and it has been warmly received by both academics and students alike.

In addition to an excellent online learning environment, there's considerable interest in mobile learning at UC. My new team is currently investigating the possibility of making Moodle accessible via mobile devices, and a number of lecturers are already exploring podcasts and vodcasts.  One of the more exciting discoveries I made when I started here was the use of a tool called Votapedia, which allows teachers to get instant responses from students in the manner of "audience response systems" - simply using students' mobile phones to dial a number and hang up.  Caller ID means that each student can only vote once… and the results can be instantly aggregated and displayed.  Best of all, because the call never connects, the system is free!

M-learning itself has taken off in a big way over the last year.  Most exciting to me was the sudden interest in the use of QR Codes in teaching and learning that has taken hold around the world.  I may have been the first to see the potential of QR Codes as a means of providing authentic, situated learning experiences way back at the start of 2006, and I've been thrilled by others who have taken up the idea and run with it.

The netbook is the another thing I've been getting excited about.  Highly functional, mobile computing became incredibly affordable during the last 12 months, and the shared "dream" of the Alan Kay's Dynabook and Nicholas Negroponte's OLPC - with every learner equipped with a portable, digital learning platform - is edging ever nearer in developing and first-world countries alike.

Hmmm… that will do for a start!  But I promise to start writing here again regularly with some of the dozens of opportunities and possibilities that have come to light recently for mobile learning practitioners everywhere!

Dean documented engagement, responsibility, and innovation/problem solving amongst the students; and also comments about the class teacher as a learner in this situation, and how it challenges educators and institutions to reflect on their own policy and practice when it comes to mobile devices in educational settings.

Tags: school, secondary, high, middle, education, mobile, cellphone, cell, phone, m-learning, mlearning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, mobile learning, teaching, students, policy, professional, development

I've been researching the use of 2D barcodes (and particularly QR Codes) in education for over two years now.  I've been very interested in their use in education as I immediately recognised their power for linking situated learning opportunities with instructional and interactive learning opportunities when I first read about them. I've since investigated alternatives such as RFID, and I still think that 2D barcodes have some big advantages, especially when it comes to things like cost and ease of (re)production - 2D barcodes can be printed for free, whereas RFID tags cost around $1 each in small quantities.

Where I see QR Codes becoming obsolete is through the rapidly improving processing capabilities of mobile devices, which are on the cusp of becoming capable of reading and interpreting printed text. Once phones become able to recognise a printed URL, for example, the use of a QR Code to "represent" a URL becomes superfluous… an unnecessary (and non-human-readable) duplication of information. Text-recognition will also be far more flexible than QR Codes; potentially, semantic constructs could be used to allow the recognition of an infinite variety of different types of data, the same way that OCR currently works on desktop computers.

In brief, I'm still very interested in QR Codes as being the current best and most cost effective technology for mobile data capture; but I'm already looking towards a future where QR Codes will be obsolete. I can think of some examples where QR Codes might still be preferable to unencoded text recognition; but in most cases, I believe the impending ability of cellphones to read printed (and hand-written) text will replace QR Codes for situated mobile learning approaches, even before such use becomes popular in education!

I guess my answer to Andy's question must be "no" - I think QR Codes are a *current* strategy for mobile learning, for those educators interested enough to use them; but I definitely can't imagine them being the *future*.

Tags: mlearning, m-learning, mobile learning, mobilelearning, mobile-learning, education, andyramsden, andy ramsden, qrcode, qr code, 2d barcode, 2dbarcode, qr-code, semacode, datamatrix, learning